Cathy Ferguson and Athletic Identity: How to Transition from Life as a 100-Meter Backstroke Champion

Cathy Ferguson_Life_30October1964 — From Life Magazine, October 30, 1964

Watching the build up to the 100-meter backstroke finals at the 1964 Olympic Games must have been like being in a pressure cooker. In the first preliminary heat, American Ginny Duenkel set the world record. In the next heat, American Cathy Ferguson broke Duenkel’s record. And finally, in the third heat, French women, Kiki Caron, set the world record yet again.

On October 14, 1964, three women who set three world records the previous day, were about to face off. As Ferguson wrote in the book, “Tales of Gold“, each of us had set a new world record, but only a fraction of a second separated us. In the finals, that would make the difference between gold and bronze.”

And so, in the pressure cooker of the National Gymnasium, the three record holders held even at the 50-meter mark when Ferguson began to pull ever so slightly ahead. In the end, Ferguson won the race at 1 minute 7.7 seconds, setting yet again, a world record.

You can see her crying on the podium as she hears the national anthem play, not only happy to win, but relieved it was all over.

I quit competitive swimming right before the ’68 Games. People ask me why I didn’t go on. But I knew I couldn’t win anymore, and when you know you can’t win, you can’t go on. I was only 19, but I just couldn’t get up for the races.

Most people do not understand just how much training takes out of you. It’s lonely in the pool. Just think of the countless hours in the water when you scarcely talk to another human being. All you have is that black line. It becomes your best friend. How many people can take that for more than six or seven years? I can remember being so tired at the end of the day that there was no way I had any energy left over to talk to the other kids.

Ferguson understood that her training and eventual triumph was worth it as her competitions and achievements took her to amazing places to meet incredible people. But her life, the life of a high-performance athlete can take its toll. In fact, when she was interviewed in the mid-1980s for the book “Tales of Gold“, she commented that athletes also need a program to help them transition out of life as an athlete.

I feel very strongly that we need some kind of detraining program for our former athletes. The East Germans have a program that helps their athletes get ready to move back into a normal life. It was very hard for me to be totally in the world of swimming and then, all of a sudden, to be completely out of it, then try to put that piece back in, only to find it doesn’t fit.

I felt quite empty when I left swimming. The thing I substituted for that programmed life was my first marriage. I was 19, and my husband was 26. in some ways I was probably 26 as well, but I had missed many of the experiences of being a teenager. Traveling all over the world and meeting important people was a fantastic experience, but I also needed those experiences that help one grow emotionally. When I was swimming, I was pretty much in control, but when I stepped out of that warm, secure cocoon, I didn’t control everything in my environment. I couldn’t control my husband, and I couldn’t control what was happening to me. At the time, I loved him dearly, but there was a needed growth period. Unfortunately, we both used marriage as a kind of sublimation for something else. I didn’t quite understand it then, but all I really needed was just to become “normal” again.

Cathy Ferguson_ESPN — Cathy Ferguson (center); Art Rickerby/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Apparently, that is something psychologists and the International Olympic Committee are coming to grips with. That the more you commit to the goal of achieving at the highest levels, the more people surrender their own personal identity to what is now being called the “Athletic Identity”. Psychologist, Chris Shambrook, explains this phenomenon in the book, The Secret Olympian.

There is a whole area of research around a concept called Athletic Identity. Athletic Identity is all about how closely my identity is allied to my performances as an athlete. If I am my results. If I am my performance. If I’ve handed ‘me’ over to that – that puts me in a very, very challenging place when the results and the performances aren’t there anymore. And it’s doubly challenging because you have to get pretty close to handling your personality over to that (mentality) in order to give yourself the best chance of winning. But it leaves you very vulnerable afterwards.

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An Australian, an American and a Japanese Face Off in Australia on the 15th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

Yamanaka Rose and Breen — 1,500 meter winners: Tsuyoshi Yamanaka, Murray Rose and George Breen

What was it like?

It’s December 7, 1956 – 15 years to the day that Japan infamously entered World War II by declaring war on the Allies by bombing Pearl Harbor, and executing a series of simultaneous attacks on Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Malaya.

Japanese swimmer Tsuyoshi Yamanaka is stepping up to the edge of the pool, readying himself for the 1,500 meter race against world record holders, American George Breen, and Australian Murray Rose. All three were born prior to the beginning of World War II, and all grew up listening to the propaganda of their respective countries during the war years.

But Yamanaka was in Australia. And while Australian attitudes to the Japanese today are overall quite positive and respectful, my guess is that in the 1950s, the many of the physical scars of the Pacific War may have faded, but not the mental ones. Memories of Australian POWS being forced to build the Burma Railway through the jungles of Thailand among others were powerful, and likely involuntarily arose when an Aussie confronted a Japanese.

I don’t know. And perhaps, Yamanaka was oblivious, as all high performance athletes tend to be towards distractions. What we do know is that the 1,500-meter race at the Melbourne Olympics brought war enemies together in a celebration of friendship, encapsulated in a photograph after Rose took gold and Yamanaka took silver, and seen by millions around the world.

Rose and Yamanaka — Murray Rose and Tsuyoshi Yamanaka

In this documentary on Murray Rose, the famed Aussie swimmer explains the symbolism of that time and that photograph:

Murray Rose: When I was growing up, I was part of a propaganda campaign for the Australian war effort. Fast forward a few years, and I’m swimming at the Olympic Games, and my main rival and competitor is Tsuyoshi Yamanaka-san. We embraced across the lane line and a photograph of that time was taken and was picked up by newspapers all over the world. For one main reason – the date was the seventh of December, 1956, the fifteenth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. So it became symbolic of two kids who had grown up on opposite sides of the war and had come together in the friendship of the Olympic arena.

As the commentator John Clarke further explained in the video, Rose “did the Olympic Movement an enormous amount of good because it exemplified what Murray called the Olympic spirit.”

To watch Rose, Yamanaka and Breen battle it out, pick up the documentary entitled “Murray Rose – Life Is Worth Swimming” at the video below at the 21-minute mark.

Also see my post about the novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”, a moving story of the Australian POW experience.

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So You Want to be an Olympian: What’s the Easy Way?

US Olympic Marathon Trials 2012 — US Olympic marathon trials in 2012. Credit David J. Phillip/AP

On Saturday, February 13, over 370 runners competed for a spot on the US Olympic marathon team. The USOC will send the top three finishers in the marathon race held in Los Angeles. It is considered a very American competition as the threshold was any American running a marathon in 2 hours and 45 minutes or less. As Amby Burfoot, an editor of Runner’s World said in this New York Times article, “Each of our runners must earn his or her bid for the Olympics — we tell them to line up, we’re going to shoot the gun, and you decide for yourself. It feels very American. One athlete, one vote.”

Apparently, other nations pick their marathoners through a committee of officials.

This made me think -“Hmmmm, can I qualify for a sport in the Olympics? Any sport?” Apparently, there are approaches to this, according to this article in Forbes Magazine. Kosovo olympic

Move to a Different Country: Kosovo and South Sudan are entering the Olympics for the first time. You should look into their citizenship requirements and get in touch with their Olympic committees.
Identify an Easy Position: the article points out that being a coxswain in rowing events that require one has low barriers to entry. You need to be light and have a strong voice, with some sense of race tactics, but you don’t have to row. You just need to be strong enough to steer the shell. Apparently, China ran an American Idol-like competition in 2006, in which they tried to find two coxswains for the China teams at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

3. Enter a “Target Sport”: Shooting a rifle or an arrow apparently doesn’t require you to be in tip-top, high performance shape. You just need a steady set of arms and very good eyesight.

4. Start Your Own Team: The country you’re in may not naturally have athletes for a particular sport. Think the Jamaican bob sled team, or Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards in the ski jump – both of whom were the first to represent their nations in their sports at the Calgary Winter Games in 1988.

5. The Old-Fashioned Way: Identify what skills and physical attributes put you in the top percentile in your age group, and train, train, train.

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Ada Kok: Dutch Butterfly Champion who Swam to Silver in 1964 Against a Wave of American Talent

Ada Kok Sharon Strouder butterfly 1964 — From left to right: Ada Kok of the Netherlands, Sharon Stouder and Kathy Ellis of the United States.

She used to train with the boys – big boys, who were boxers during the day and bouncers in bars at night. Ada Kok was a teenage swimming phenom, asked to join the Dutch national swimming team at the age of 13, but in the early 1960s in Amsterdam, athletes were on their own.

“In those days, you just had a swimming coach but nothing for any condition training. The coach of the boxing team helped me. I ran in the park with the other boxers. I skipped rope. And my friends made sure that boys didn’t give me trouble when going out in Amsterdam because they’d tell them, ‘I’ll punch you in the nose if you don’t do right by her’.”

Inspired by her sister, who competed on the Dutch swim team at the 1960 Rome Olympics, Kok became the premier butterfly swimmer in the world, setting the world record in that discipline in September, 1963, and again in May, 1964. At the age of 17, Kok was the favorite going into the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo.

Nearly matching her world record time, Kok swam an excellent race in the 100-meter butterfly finals. But she lost to Sharon Stouder of the USA, who broke Kok’s world record. Going into the finals, Kok expected to win, but in retrospect, she now knows she was unwittingly swimming upstream against a US team that was more prepared and more experienced than any other team.

“I was very disappointed,” Kok told me. “I was the world’s record holder for years, and I was training hard for this event. I didn’t know Sharon Stouder. I didn’t think about my competitors. I was confident, not arrogant. But I was also naïve.”

In the end, no other country had the resources to support a swim team like the USA at the time. Not only was the Netherlands 0.4% the size, 6.3% the population, and 43% of the per capita GDP of the United States in 1964, the US had the swim clubs, the coaches and the access to international competition that very few other athletes in the world had.

Ada Kok on bicycle in Tokyo Olympic Village — Ada Kok (left) on a bicycle in the Olympic Village in 1964.

“They were more professional,” said Kok of the Americans. “They had paid coaches. Mine was a volunteer, who had a regular job. Our swim federation didn’t have the money to send us abroad so we competed in nearby countries traveling at minimum cost.”

And yet, the Dutch women’s team still proved to be a powerful force, winning silver in a team race in the women’s 4X100 meter medley relay, a competition where four swimmers swim two lengths of the pool each in four different styles in this order: the backstroke, the breaststroke, the butterfly stroke, and freestyle (which means any style other than the previous three).

As a demonstration of American dominance, the US swim coach did not even use their top swimmers in the heats. And the four swimmers who swam in the finals set an Olympic record, finishing over three seconds faster than the silver medalists, the Dutch. Making it close was Ada Kok, who got some measure of revenge against Stouder by swimming the third leg butterfly stroke over 1 second faster than the American in the finals. “The silver medal for the team was a positive surprise,” said Kok. “We couldn’t get anywhere near the Americans, but to be second as a team was fantastic.”

Kok would regain her world record in the butterfly in August, 1965, as well as win the gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly in Mexico City in 1968. But she was happy with her results in 1964. “You’re always pleased to get a medal. When you’re on the podium, and you see it and touch it, it’s wonderful.”

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“Do it Again. Again. Again.”: The Uncompromising Mindset of an Olympic Champion

roger jackson own the podium — Roger Jackson, CEO of Own the Podium

To be the best athlete in the world often means overcoming overwhelming fatigue, excruciating pain, and suffocating fear and anxiety. As described by Olympic swimming champion Dick Roth, pain not only must be tolerated, it must be befriended.

I often thought, world-class athletes – they aren’t like you and me. Defying pain, building up super-human endurance, reaching world-class levels – is that trainable?

I posed that question to Roger Jackson, three-time Olympian, and gold medal rower in the coxless pairs at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Jackson was the CEO of Own the Podium, an NPO tasked with enabling Canada’s athletes to develop into Olympic champions. The only two times Canada had ever hosted the Olympics – 1976 in Montreal and 1988 in Calgary – no one from Canada won a gold medal. Own the Podium had a mission – help Canada achieve the highest medal haul in the 2010 Winter Games, to be held on home turf in Vancouver, Canada. While Team Canada did not come out on top in the medal count, Canada did win the highest number of gold medals, 14, which also happened to be the most total gold medals ever won by a country in a Winter Games.

“We had always been fifth in the world,” Jackson told me. “I was asked by the Canadian government and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee to build a program to win the most medals in Vancouver. I had five years. I hired strong leadership. And I insisted on 100% commitment from our athletes. If you were willing to be disciplined and committed to the world-class training regimen we created, we would fund you. We worked with the athletes on plans, assessed the performance of the plan three times a year, identifying issues and upgrading the plans as we needed.”

Jackson emphasized that Olympians who want to be champions have to have this attitude – no compromise. “Family, school, wife – they cannot compromise your training. You need to sleep, rest and work your ass off. That’s the tone of the very best.”

Jackson said that’s why the Canadian rowing teams were traditionally strong, and why all Canadian teams had a chance, even the unknown Roger Jackson / George Hungerford coxless pair team. Canadian rowers trained hard and did not compromise.

Jackson, Roger | Hungerford, George — Canada’s Roger Jackson and George Hungerford celebrate their gold medal win in the rowing event at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (CP Photo/COC) Roger Jackson and George Hungerford du Canada célèbrent leur médaille d’or au deux d’aviron aux Jeux olympique de Tokyo de 1964. (Photo PC/AOC)

“In the University of British Columbia Rowing program, we were told to do something, and we had to do it,” said Jackson. “Maybe we couldn’t believe we could do it, but we’d have to try. We would row three or four miles every morning and again every evening. And because there were so few teams to compete with us as other competitive teams were so far away from us, the coach had all the different teams compete against each other. At the end of each morning workout, we would row a 2000 m race against our other crews. The slowest boats would start, being the pairs and seconds later the fours would start and later the eights would start, all converging on the finish line at about the same time. And to win, you would never give up.”

“We would get to the finish line totally exhausted, dry retching, heaving. And, on occasion, the coach would say, ‘not good enough. Do it again.’ And so we raced 2000 m again. And if it wasn’t good enough, he’d tell us to do it again. I was eating 8,000 calories a day and still losing weight, but I knew that no one else had this incredible work ethic. That was the attitude that made us do things we didn’t think we could do. So when we got to the starting line in Tokyo, I knew we had done everything we could do to prepare ourselves to win.”

Do it again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Sound familiar?

Here is a famous scene from the film, Miracle, about the 1980 USA Ice Hockey Team that won gold at the Lake Placid Olympics. Coach Herb Brooks has taken his team to play the Norwegian national team and the game ends in a tie. Brooks isn’t happy with the team’s dedication and commitment, and makes them skate sprints over and over and over….until finally, the team’s captain, exhausted beyond reason, has an epiphany.

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The Pain and Joy of Pain: Dick Roth and the Gold that Almost Wasn’t

Roth Saari Hetz on the Podium_Asahi Graf_30October1964 — Left to Right: Roy Saari, Dick Roth, Gerhard Hetz, silver, gold and bronze medalists of the 400 meter individual medley at the 1964 Tokyo Games

“I can withstand pain. In fact, I love pain.”

Olympic champion, Dick Roth, referred to pain as his advantage. The 1964 gold medalist in the 400-meter individual swimming medley believed he could tolerate more pain than almost any of his competitors. And when you’re an Olympic-level swimmer, a combination of holding your breath and stretching your body to its physical limits creates oxygen debt.

Oxygen is vital to breaking down glucose to provide your body with energy. But when the body can’t get enough oxygen to create energy, it releases lactic acid, a substance that can create energy without oxygen. When there is more lactic acid in your blood than can be burned off, you get pain. And the more intense your physical activity, the more intense the pain can be.

And Roth’s pain was intense. As described briefly in an earlier post, Roth was one of the young American swimmers favored to do well in his swimming event. But literally hours after the Opening Ceremonies of the Tokyo Summer Games, Roth was tossing and turning in discomfort and then tremendous pain.

Roth got himself out of bed at 6 am, got to the Olympic Village infirmary. The nurse poked and probed. The swim team doctor did blood tests and then left him alone in his bed. He was 24 hours from competing in the Olympic Games. “This was not the way to calm me down,” thought Roth. Then finally, they told him. He was going to be transported to a US Army Hospital in Western Tokyo and have his appendix removed.

“I was so blown away they had to bring in a counselor to calm me down,” wrote Roth. “The ambulance ride to Tachikawa is a blur. The only thing I remember is pulling up to the hospital entrance and thinking I was going to die.”

The doctors told Roth that they would have to take out his appendix ASAP. He said no. They somehow prepped Roth for the operation and asked a member of the US Olympic Committee to sign off on the operation since Roth was still a minor at 17, but the USOC didn’t want to take responsibility. They eventually tracked down Roth’s parents who of course wanted to OK the operation. But their son was adamant. “My parents came in to see me before they signed, thank god. I begged them not to let the doctors take it out. I really wanted to swim. What if they were wrong? So began hours of debate back and forth with phone calls to the States for third and fourth opinions. In the end, my parents made a deal to take all responsibility, an unbelievably tough decision.”

The Roths and the doctors agreed that Roth would not exercise except to swim in the heats and that he would have blood tests every four hours. Roth was back in the Olympic Village that evening and went to sleep. The next day, he swam relatively poorly in the heats, 15 seconds slower than his personal best, but still made it into the finals.

“Everyone is on the same level physically,” Roth told me. “So it is all mental. On any given day anyone can win. We all knew about pain. You had to swim through the pain. I would get myself into oxygen debt and when I couldn’t add 2 and 3, when I thought I couldn’t go any further, I knew I was in the right place.”

And as he was resting in bed waiting for the finals to begin, he wrote that pain was a part of his mental preparation. “All that day I swam the race in my mind and felt the pain over and over and over. I was obsessive. But I got to watch my confidence build back up. I remember it very clearly.”

What Roth didn’t remember clearly was the 400 meter finals race, which is 100 meter sprints in four different styles: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. “I really don’t remember the race very well,”

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Coach Urho Saari and the US Water Polo Team: Daniel Drown Remembers What Could Have Been

US Water Polo Team 1964 — The US Olympic team in Tokyo, 1964 Olympic Games, Standing L-R: Dan Drown, Ron Crawford, Stan Cole, Bib Saari, Ralph Whitney, George Stransky, Coach Urho Saari. Bottom L-R: Tony van Dorp, Chick Mcllroy, David Ashleigh, Ned Mcllroy, Paul Mcllroy. Source: The history of USA Water Polo in the Olympic Games.

They were tied 1-1 with the Yugoslavians at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Along with Hungarians and the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was part of a European domination of a sport – water polo. The United States were not on the same par as Yugoslavia at that time. They had never played any teams outside the United States until those Games. And yet, there they were, tied 1 apiece with the Yugoslavians.

“Our first game was against Yugoslavia,” said Daniel Drown, who was on that USA squad. They were supposed to be huge. When we came out of the tunnel at the pool, we didn’t think they looked that big. Then we went to shake their hands and their shortest guy was 6ft 3, and their biggest were 6ft 7. They were huge!”

The US team played even throughout the first half with the Yugoslavians. And in the second half, they caught a break – one of the Yugoslavians was ejected with four minutes remaining, which meant they would be down one man until the US scored. Despite the advantage, the US played tentatively. “We have an extra guy,” said Drown. “If we score, it will be the biggest upset. But everybody was afraid. No one would take the shot. Finally, one of their guys scored and they won 2-1.”

The US water polo team would go on to beat Brazil 7-1, but lose to the Netherlands, and thus fail to advance to the finals.

Drown remembers thinking, “we didn’t deserve to win. We were playing way over our heads.” But he knows the US team played brilliant defense. And he believes the fledgling US water polo program benefited from the coaching of Urho Saari.

“Saari believed in conditioning, absolute conditioning,” said Drown. “His philosophy was to work us so hard, so that you were sick to your stomach, and you couldn’t eat after a workout. But when it came time to play in a game, we may not have been as good as the other team, but we would be in better shape. We would think, ‘why couldn’t we win?'”

According to this article, Saari was an innovator in water polo. “Saari insisted that more emphasis should be placed on swimming, rapid ball-handling and changes in offensive and defensive tactics. He frowned on rough play and thought that teams should be less dependent on scoring done by the center-forward.”

Urho Saari at the Urho Saari Swim Stadium — Legendary El Segundo swimming coach Urho Saari. Daily Breeze file photo by Jack Wyman

“We would play 3 on 3 keep away for long periods of time, which disciplined you,” explained Drown. “One person had the ball and one would receive and he had better be open, and the third guy better be getting open. Everybody is constantly moving to get away from whomever is guarding them.”

“Saari would also run every night a scrimmage for 90 minutes four on four. He would referee it. When you did something wrong, you could see clearly when something was wrong. They threw to an open space and you

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Rare Canadian Gold in Tokyo: George Hungerford and Roger Jackson Win the Coxless Pairs

George Hungerford and Roger Jackson in shell — George Hungerford and Roger Jackson after winning gold in the coxless pairs in Tokyo.

They were an afterthought, really.

Canada’s rowing eight was coached by Glen Mervyn, a protégé of the famous Frank Read, who coached the eight crew that got Canada’s only medal at the Rome Olympics – silver. George Hungerford and Roger Jackson were thrown together in the coxless pair, without a coach, in a “clunker of a boat”, only weeks before flying to Tokyo for the XVIII Olympiad.

Hungerford was supposed to row in the vaunted eight, but fell ill, and then, got kicked off the premier crew. That decision led to other decisions. A rower named Wayne Pretty assumed Hungerford’s spot on the eight. And since Pretty had been in the coxless pair boat, Jackson was left without a teammate. With the rowing roster set at 15, and the coxless pair considered a lesser priority to Team Canada, Hungerford and Jackson were asked to pair up to provide representation in this event at the Olympics, assuming Hungerford could get in good enough condition in time to compete.

“When I was selected to the eights, it was a dream come true,” Hungerford told me. But when he was diagnosed with mononucleosis in July, 1964, he was told to rest for four weeks. “It was a depressing time for me. And four weeks later my doctor told me the symptoms were gone, but my chance to join the eights was gone.”

But if they wanted to go to Tokyo, Hungerford and Jackson had to make it work. Team Canada’s expectations for coxless pairs was low. And when Hungerford and Jackson got into a shell to train, they didn’t immediately click on the water. “No, there wasn’t an instant connection,” said Hungerford. “We had to come to terms with our issues. We yelled and screamed at each other after the first few rows. But we realized that if we we’re going to Tokyo we had to put these differences aside and work together.”

Despite the bad luck that brought the two together, Hungerford observed one good bit of fortune – “As it turned out, physically we were a perfect match. We were the same height, same weight, same mental toughness and determination.” Their determination drove them to train hard, harder than anyone else in the remaining weeks to Tokyo.

And their hard work paid off in another bit of fortune. Upon arriving in Tokyo, Canada was able to borrow a boat from the Americans. And it turned out to be a George Pocock shell, a hand-crafted boat from the most reputable craftsman of his time in the US. As Hungerford explained, while everyone else was already in top condition and thus focusing on their mental preparation, Jackson and Hungerford worked hard on their rowing. “We had a full endurance training program in the last week. We were doing interval training, only 500 meter sprints. We hadn’t done a full 2000 meters and we wanted to do a time trial so we asked the eights coach to time us. We knew we had the ‘swing’. We had a sense the boat was moving, the boat was working for us. But after the 2000 meter time trial, the coach told us his watch wasn’t working properly so we didn’t know how fast we were.”

They didn’t know, until they entered the first heat, which they won. After the heat “The coach told me his watch wasn’t really broken, but he hadn’t believed it the first time he timed us,” said Hungerford. “We had the fastest time of all the heats. That put us directly in the finals – no repechages. That gave us confidence. With four or five days between the trials and finals, we kept training and we rowed our hearts out. Rowing and sleeping. Rowing and sleeping. Endurance over 2000 meters was critical.”

The Germans and the Dutch were favorites in the coxless pair competition. But once you get to the finals, you have a one in six chance, was how Hungerford and Jackson were thinking. Unfortunately, they started the race by catching a “crab” – one of the oars didn’t hit the water the right way getting the boat off to a slow and awkward start. But another boat had false started so Jackson and Hungerford got a second chance and had a good start.

At 900 meters into the 2000-meter course, they decided to go for it with a power 30 – 30 extraordinarily hard strokes up. “The boat just flew,” said Hungerford. “We were neck and neck up to 900, but then we took a length and a half on the other boats. It was a fantastic feeling. The boat was just moving, an incredible feeling, an adrenaline rush knowing we had the lead. Now we had to not let the other boats catch us. The Dutch boat was challenging. The last 200 meters was hell. Our tanks were drained at 1500 meters – I don’t know where we found that inner strength in the last 500.”

“They might have caught us if the race was longer. I was starting to fade so Roger had to adjust. We’re rowing as a pair in a sensitive boat, sensitive to one rower overpowering the other. You have to perfectly synchronize. If one loses strength the other has to match, match each other in all respects. It was challenging. As Roger told me, he had heard this burst come from the stands. They were calling out in German for the German crew, which was also coming on strong. But as Roger said, ‘there was no bloody way we were going to lose’.”

In fact, they won. Canadian’s only gold medal of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics came thanks to a pair of rowers who through sickness and circumstance were thrust together in a shotgun marriage. And there they were, jelly legged, nothing left in the tank, standing at the winner’s podium with gold suspended from their necks, listening to the Canadian anthem, the only medal ceremony it was played in Tokyo.

“It was an incredible moment for us,” said Hungerford.

When it was time to leave Tokyo, to pack everything up and say goodbye to a life-changing experience, the Pocock shell, a championship shell, was returned to the American team. The boat had no name. But when they gave the boat back, it had a new decoration on the bow – a decal with the Canadian flag.

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On the Eve of the New Year, My Favorite Posts

Roy_summer vacation_1967 maybe — Roy, sometime between the Tokyo and Mexico City Olympic Games.

On this, the last day of 2015, I’d like to thank everyone for their support of my blog – The Olympians. I have posted at least once every day since I started the blog on May 1. Out of about 300 posts, I’ve selected 25 that I personally like, in good part because I’ve had the great fortune to talk with the people mentioned in these stories.

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Frank Gorman: Harvard Star, Tokyo Olympian, and Now Inductee to the International Swimming Hall of Fame

GormanAndreasonSitzberger_1964 — Larry Andreasen, Ken Sitzberger and Frank Gorman lead an American sweep of the medals in the 3-meter springboard competition at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games.

“I was having breakfast in the Olympic Village,” Frank Gorman related to me several months ago. “There are people from all over the world there, some of their names and faces are in the papers. And suddenly you’re mingling with them. One day, a bunch of guys from the US track team sat down at my table and we chatted. I said I was on the swim team, a diver. The man I was talking with asked if I knew a man named Gorman, and then he said ‘I heard he’s the best we got.’ Well, that was Bob Hayes, and he’s looking at me like I’m special.”

Frank Gorman, from my home town of New York, was special. After just missing the cut to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he won the diving trials for the three-meter springboard competition convincingly. People believed Gorman was the best the US had, and was expected to win gold.

Gorman went on to win silver at the Tokyo Olympiad, become a diving judge at the 1968 Olympic Games as well as World Championships, Pan American Games, High Diving and Cliff Diving competitions. One of the most active members of the US Diving community, Frank Gorman, as it was announced on November 18, will be inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame next June.

The youngest of six kids, Gorman got a lot of attention from his athletic parents and siblings. The family would go out to Lake Tonetta in Brewster, New York for summer vacations, and his older brothers and sister would take to throwing Gorman in the air teaching him how to do acrobatic tricks. So flipping off the pier on a small diving board came easy to him. Gorman was so good as a high school student that he was recruited by a Harvard swim team alumnus over three years – Gorman would visit the Crimson campus, room with members of the swim team, and eventually enroll at Harvard, where he never lost a diving competition.

The Olympics are the meeting ground for the best of the best. And at the Tokyo Games, in the beautiful Tange-designed “National Gymnasium” where the swimming and diving competitions were held, Gorman held the lead in the 3-meter springboard competition after 8 dives, with only two remaining.

“It was difficult to sleep the night before competing,” Gorman told me. “I’m lying on my bed trying to sleep, seeing my dives over and over again. I would finally get to sleep around 5. And then I’d go and compete. There was a lot of waiting in between dives, so I took a lot of naps. But during the competition, I was good, focused.” And after 8 dives, the gold was Gorman’s to take.

Gorman explained that when he is in good form, he feels the water in a special way and in the right order. “Time slows down, I feel the water with my fingertips, then my head, my chest…but on that ninth dive, my lower legs did not enter the water the right way and I felt the water on my back where I shouldn’t have felt it, and I knew immediately that I was short. Now, just before that dive somebody on the deck said to me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t go LONG’. Now why he said that, I do not know. Because I was always a little short on the Back 2 & 1/2. Anyway, it messed with my mind and I did not go long – I went shorter than I ever had before. I kicked too early, kicking at the board instead of above the board, so I didn’t make it to the vertical I needed. I got low scores. That was devastating. I had gotten straight 9’s on that dive at the Trials.”

GormanFrankTokyo1964-1 — Frank Gorman competing at the Tokyo Olympics.

Now behind in the score and entering his tenth and final dive, his coach advised him to ease down the determination and intensity to make sure Gorman executed well enough to give him a chance at gold. But Gorman thought that this would be the last dive of his career, and that “I have to go for it!” Gorman gave it 100% and had his best dive of the competition. You can see that amazing dive here!

But by that time, even his best effort could not help him climb his way back to the top. His American teammate, Ken Sitzberger, took gold instead, and with diver, Larry Andreasen, led a USA sweep of the gold, silver and bronze medals for the three-meter springboard. In fact, the U.S. team won eight of the twelve Olympic diving medals, making for a very happy diving team.

“Yes, I didn’t get the gold,” said Gorman. “It was a big disappointment. But I look around at other disappointments, and silver is not so bad. I am very grateful. We were three happy guys. As far as I know. It had never been done before. And never done since.”

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The Olympians

Category Archive: Water Sports

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